“In short, I'm increasingly confident that we can meet this year's delivery plan.”

In context

“es to participate and provide color from their perspective as well. First, Aerospace. Aerospace performed well in the quarter. It had a revenue of $3.06 billion, a 4.1% increase. Operating earnings of $403 million or 26.3% better than the year ago quarter. Operating margin is 230 basis points better than the year ago quarter. To give you a little perspective here, Gulfstream had 38 deliveries in the quarter, including 15 G700s, which is 4 more than the year ago quarter and 2 more sequentially. This was offset in part by fewer G650s as we made the final deliveries of this high-margin product. As I indicated previously, the supply chain continues to improve and is performing better to both schedule and quality. We are finding fewer faults and those we are finding are becoming easier to fix. In short, I'm increasingly confident that we can meet this year's delivery plan. And in fact, we are delivering G700s on a much more predictable cadence. I am pleased that all of our G700 retrofit airplanes have been delivered. Also, all of the G700s that were completed before engines were installed have also been delivered. You may recall that both of these things have negatively impacted costs and delayed deliveries. We are in the process of completing the G700 flight test aircraft and a number of them will be delivered in the second half. These are lower-margin aircraft and will be dilutive to margins, but will reduce inventory and increase operating cash by a like amount. The initial deliveries of the G800 will be made in the third quarter. We expect to deliver about 13 G800s for the year, which is about 3 less than the G650s we delivered in the second half of las”